On a Sunday night in October 2024, Nicolas Duvernois fell down the stairs in his own home. The founder of Pur Vodka and Romeo’s Gin had just hit his breaking point.
“I was losing my own body,” he says in an interview. For three years, warning signs had been building—less concentration, fewer ideas, declining patience. “I was not clinically dead, but humanly dead.”
The next morning, his two business partners, showed up at his door with croissants. His wife, Karolyne, had summoned them.
“I didn’t give them the chance to challenge me,” Duvernois says. “Right away, I said, ‘You have nothing to say, I want to talk.’ And then I just said everything I had in mind, and I said that I’m going to stop working. They were surprised. They’re like, ‘When?’ I’m like, ‘Now.'”
That kicked off an eight-month sabbatical for the 45-year-old entrepreneur. The timing matters: research shows 72% of entrepreneurs deal with mental health issues, and 42% experienced burnout in the past month. Duvernois found a third option—stepping back rather than stepping down.
From CEO to President
Three years before the fall, Duvernois was managing a 40-person company. Romeo’s Gin alone was pulling over $21 million in annual sales through Quebec’s SAQ liquor monopoly, with international distribution in Japan, France, Belgium, and the UK.
The business was fine. His role in it wasn’t.
“I’m an entrepreneur, I’m not a manager, and I lost myself by being a manager and not by being an entrepreneur,” Duvernois explains. “My role is to have crazy ideas and to have my team yell at me that they won’t do it until I convince them that one idea in a thousand is the best thing since sliced bread.”
He describes the reality of his days before the break: “I was in my office working on some crazy new product that we’re going to launch, and then I look at my time and like, ‘Oh, we have a meeting.’ I go to a meeting, a meeting that does nothing—like a lot of those meetings, you know—and I’m like, I lost my energy. Like I lost everything during that day.”
When Duvernois returned after eight months, he wasn’t CEO anymore. He took the title of President, leaving his partners to run operations while he focused on innovation, strategic partnerships, and creative vision. Performance improved.
“The most precious gift that you can give to an entrepreneur at another point is to tell them to restart being an entrepreneur,” he says.
800 Pitches, One Conclusion
Duvernois spent six years as an investor on Dans l’oeil du dragon, the French-Canadian version of Dragon’s Den. He evaluated over 800 business pitches and invested millions—including one $2 million loss.
His assessment: “It’s super easy to be able to sell around $700,000 of products. Surpass one million, it gets really hard. Go to three, you’re like, ‘Oh, this guy knows how to run.’ And over five, it’s almost impossible.”
Duvernois has fielded multiple acquisition offers from major spirits companies. He’s said no every time.
“I don’t have the obsession of building a billion-dollar brand, and you know what? I don’t even want to build a billion-dollar brand,” he says.
Why? “I think I’ve found the perfect balance, or close to the perfect balance, of what I like to do as an entrepreneur and what I want to be as a husband and father. So, I don’t want to change that too much to restart another cycle of working non-stop.”
He runs a profitable company with international distribution and room to grow. “The moment I will feel that it’s impossible to continue to grow is the moment I will call them back and say, ‘You know what? Take the business.’ But until now, we have a very profitable company, an amazing team.”
The Quebec Problem
Building a major brand from Quebec has specific challenges. The province is home to 89 distilleries—the most in Canada among 470 nationwide—but the market is small.
“It’s hard to build a big business just in Quebec,” he says. “We only have 8 million people. You have to be able to export, and that takes a whole other entrepreneur than just building something here.”
His company has tried launching in the U.S. three times: February 2020, weeks before the pandemic; early 2025, after political uncertainty following the November 2024 election; and now 2026, with a three-year plan starting in Florida.
The domestic market has its own issues. At the SAQ, shelf space goes to large producers. Smaller distillers fight for visibility.
“We’re the biggest of the smallest, and the smallest of the biggest,” Duvernois says. “It’s a weird position where we’re always in talks with the big players, but they now see us as competitors.”
Romeo’s Gin ranks among Canada’s leading gin brands, known for bottles featuring original urban art. Pur Vodka has won over 80 international medals. The company recently pushed into non-alcoholic ready-to-drink cocktails, expanding into grocery stores.
The Canadian craft spirits market is expected to grow at 29.9% CAGR through 2030, with gin the fastest-growing segment. Duvernois is betting on sustainable growth over explosive exits.
From Hospital Floors to Award-Winning Spirits
Twenty years ago, Duvernois worked night shifts as a janitor at Ste-Justine Hospital in Montreal—the same hospital where he was born. Twelve years mopping floors, singing to children, becoming known as “Caillou” for his bald head.
He used that income to finance four years of vodka research. In January 2010, he sold his first bottle—three weeks after winning the World Vodka Masters competition in London. The award arrived before he’d made a single sale.
His three children were born in that same hospital. His cousin, Isabelle Demers, started there as an elevator operator and rose to become CEO.
“It’s because of those floors that I have the life I have today,” he says.
In an era that celebrates unicorns and hypergrowth, Duvernois’ story reminds us that we can chose differently. And work-life balance can be its own form of success.